Visitors drank wine from privately held cellars and ate food cooked from ingredients grown on the premises. They received compassionate care and stayed in beautiful facilities surrounded by manicured gardens and artwork created by European masters.

This was not a fine hotel, but rather what hospital life was like in many places during the Renaissance, according to history professor John Henderson of the University of London.

In a presentation this May at the University of Verona, Henderson will explain why "the traditional image of pre-modern hospitals as hellholes, where people were taken to die, has been overturned".

The care must have seemed especially good to poorer patients in Italy at the time.

"Hospitals in this period provided free treatment, a warm environment and specialised care, which they would not have found in the community," Henderson says.

He explains that population growth and development in countries such as Italy, Spain and France led to the establishment of major charitable foundations that constructed medical hospitals, foundling hospitals for abandoned children and specialised isolation hospitals for victims of epidemics, such as plague and syphilis.

In his book The Renaissance Hospital: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul, Henderson says the general care facilities had a low 5-10% mortality rate.

An early 16th century document describes care at Florence's Santa Maria Nuova hospital. It mentions how the infirm could ring a bell to receive service, which included drinking wines from the hospital's cellar.

"While the sick are eating, three servants go round the ward serving excellent wine. Each person receives an appropriate amount of particular wine - white, red, smooth, sweet or dry - suited to his illness or appetite," it reads.

Foods included homemade lasagne, chicken soup, egg and vegetable dishes and fresh breads, all prepared with ingredients grown on the premises.

Medicines such as wound plasters, cough syrups and chest rubs were also concocted on site out of ingredients like essential herbal oils, often associated with today's complementary therapies.

Spiritual health

Spirituality was viewed to be an important part of the healing process, so religious services, sometimes including music, were conducted in the wards.

Cleanliness was also important. Large laundries daily handled the "scalding, cleaning, washing, drying" of bed linens.

Much of the staff consisted of single women who, according to Henderson, entered into contracts with hospitals.

Hospitals provided free room and board for life in exchange for nursing duties and the individual's inheritance upon death.

These nurses were often valued on par with male doctors, as exemplified by "having several remarkable cures to their credit", which were documented at the time.

Samuel Cohn, a professor in the Department of Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, says there were actually more hospitals in Italy during the 13th and 14th centuries. But many were taken over by big, organised "monopolies" such as Santa Maria Nuova.

Cohn admits modern healthcare facilities have their "bugs". But he adds that, due to technological advances, "if you gave me a choice, I'd take the present-day hospital".